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Not to deviate too much from the thread, but to follow up a little with what @Tunes and @Glen Trew are discussing: I've been playing around with my tape machines and have discovered that stereo 2-Track recordings made on a Nagra STC can be played on my Technics RS-1506 when the 2-Track playback head is enabled, and it sounds absolutely amazing, especially in 15ips Nagramaster. It actually sounds better than 4-Track recordings made on the Technics machine itself. I don't have the wide track head that is being discussed, but though I'd share a little of my musings.

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One of the more interesting accessories for the Nagra III found its way onto my workbench, and as I didn't find any information about the magnasync/moviola mixer anywhere else in the forum my hope is that one of the colleagues here remembers it.

As you can see, one of the previous owners did baad things to it and I'm trying to restore it to its former glory - any chance to get the schematics?

BTW, part of the eBay package was a SELA, also for the III, and it works pretty well. They are pretty hard to come by in Europe, might be easier in the US.

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Hi Vienna
Whoever made it certainly tried to make it match a Nagra III
But the control knobs, the metal rings around the knobs and even the radius of the corners of the case tells me it's nothing Nagra did.. Most likely it was made to sit under and match a Nagra III. I would think finding a schematic would be about as hard as finding another one of those. What does the top look like?

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Not to deviate too much from the thread, but to follow up a little with what @Tunes and @Glen Trew are discussing: I've been playing around with my tape machines and have discovered that stereo 2-Track recordings made on a Nagra STC can be played on my Technics RS-1506 when the 2-Track playback head is enabled, and it sounds absolutely amazing, especially in 15ips Nagramaster. It actually sounds better than 4-Track recordings made on the Technics machine itself. I don't have the wide track head that is being discussed, but though I'd share a little of my musings.

Hi Jon. Keep in mind that a recording made with Nagra Master must be played back on a Nagra IV-S (or Nagra T-Audio) in Nagra Master mode.

Nagra Master recordings are done at 15ips, but with the pre-emphasis of a 7-1/2ips curve, requiring the Nagra Master playback setting during playback. I'm not aware of a Technics machine that has a Nagra Master playback mode. I imagine that when you playback a Nagra Master recording on a Technics machine, it sounds uncommonly sibilant and bright by comparison, which is not an accurate reproduction.

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I got one of the amplifier chains working but without the schematic, and considering the fact that one of the pre-owners decided to change many things, it might be quite difficult to find out about the original ideas of the developers.

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Hi Phil, yep I guessed it was just a misconception immortalised in print - possibly an enthusiastic European talking cm/s to a (then) hopeful Brit hearing ips .... just some of me was hoping there might have been a new holy grail to chase - the handful of stereo 30ips prototypes doing the trade shows in 1970. Of course, like all my rarebit dreams, it never happened.

I'm sure there probably WERE portable stereo (multichannel) 30ips machines around in the Nagra / Stellavox years, but they were portable in the 1940s (Alan Lomax) sense - not the sub-Nagra footprint I was lusting after. No Valentine for John Keays ...

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Yes, I'm watching that one. Seller does not know much about tape recorders - looks to be more of an estate / antique vendor so a bit of a crapshoot as to whether this unit has any functionality other than as a collectible museum piece.